"Forty-Two Cent Zombies"

A parade of men in gray pants shuffled down the dark concrete stairs. Their steps are slow and deliberate, the burden they carry slung over their shoulders. These are the hopeless. These are the condemned.

Down below, the black furnace’s stomach pops and sizzles with insatiable hunger. The men deposit their cargo into a great heap on the outskirts of the flickering yellow halo. Standing before the pyre is the Burner. It’s his task to carry out the act. To kill them—these zombies.

Not dead. Not alive.

The hopes and dreams of an entire nation gone horribly wrong. A question asked—never to be answered. A hand extended in the darkness—grasping only air.

The Burner opens the heavy iron hatch and stares coldly into the fire. Flames leap up, licking the air above his fingers. Satisfied that it’s indeed hot enough, he walks over to the heap and picks out a bag.

There are love letters and there are bills. Notices of death and notices of taxes. Some of these things were addressed lovingly by hand, others were printed by cold mechanical means—but it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same.

Undeliverable.

Working quickly, the Burner begins his black task. The others above do not like him, for he is their opposite. Like a medieval executioner, he’s shunned by his peers—who fear him as much as they loath what he represents, which is failure.
All systems are flawed. No one is perfect.

At least, that’s what the Burner tells himself as he stuffs the first batch of forty-two cent zombies into the fire. Smokey curls of paper flutter out of the furnace’s big gaping mouth, and he grimaces as the paper buckles and withers in the intense heat. The gray-ash streaks his cheeks, mingling with the trickle of sweat from his brow. Though his hands are steady, his eyes water—not from the heat or the smoke, but from the despair that legion of undead stirs deep inside him. The fires burn long into the night. And the next night, and the next—until the end of everything.